Alive
by leave your sanity at the door
Summary: Set during the events of TDKR. Doomsday is fast approaching, and Talia's apprehension emerges in a dream. A mood piece drabble uploaded on the request of Lola. Talia x Bane. Rated T for language and distressing situations.


**AN:**

**Uploaded at the request of the one and only ****Lola****. Originally it was written on the off chance ****Nik216**** could maybe incorporate into her fic ****_Up High Above or Down Below_****, but ended up not making the final cut. Alone it is basically a mood piece drabble. Whether it works as such, you tell me :) **

**I own nothing. Christopher Nolan could whoop my kardASSian with both hands tied behind his back.**

* * *

An open highway fringed with orange streetlamps, beneath an onyx sky and twinkling diamond stars. A soaring breeze racing back and forth. Two faceless, female voices were talking. It could have been English, Marwari, or something else entirely, unintelligible to all but them. Neither did it matter that neither could see each other.

"So…How are you?"

It was a voice long since gone - strikingly child-like, and one of which she retained only the most rudimentary of memories - but unmistakeable.

"I'm good," Talia replied to the air, "And you?"

"I'm good too. It's been a long time."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"No, don't be," the voice cooed softly, seemingly everywhere at once, "It wasn't your fault."

She wasn't sure whether the young woman – now over a decade Talia's junior – was referring to her own untimely death, or that Talia had never sought to connect with her spiritually.

"No, but still..." she trailed off, suddenly lost for words, "I wish I could have done something."

"I've never blamed you, and I never will. Please, don't blame yourself."

"I don't…not entirely. But… I can't help feeling guilty."

"Don't. It's OK. Honestly. There's nothing you could have done. If something's predestined, nothing in the world can change it."

"I'm not sure if I believe in fate."

"I do."

"You weren't predestined to be-"

"Ssshh."

She didn't press it. Her mother was right; fate – if it existed at all - wasn't necessarily benevolent.

"Fate and free will aren't mutually exclusive, Talia. They're like the blades on a pair of scissors; unable to function without each other. And without either of them the world would stop turning. Those men chose to do what they did, and if they hadn't, you wouldn't be on the verge of something so momentous it will make history."

"That's one way of putting it."

"It's the truth, Talia."

"Are you pleased with me?"

"It's not my place to say."

"What do you mean?"

Suddenly the scene began to sway, warping and swirling like marble ink droplets in a tray of water. Talia heard her mother say something, but the voice was snatched away on the escalating breeze. She continued talking, unabated, but all Talia could heard was the sound of fierce air currents as her hair whipped about her face and her clothes fluttered with a life of their own.

Heat. Somewhere close to her, she could feel it. Burning. The distinct crackling of debris, and the almost comforting warmth of unbridled flames. Invisible, though.

Her mother's voice swam back into earshot; "What made you change your mind, Talia?

"Huh?"

Talia tried to concentrate amidst the sudden disorientation. The ground beneath her feet undulated and the wind increased another notch. She felt as if she were slipping backwards.. backwards into the vastness of the night.. and that everything was slipping away, racing away from her at speed like the universe's expansion after the big bang. Her mother's voice, too, grew fainter.

"About your father."

"I thought you knew..?"

"It doesn't make sense to me..." it was barely a whisper now.

"Sorry? I can't hear you- "

"You forgot about the flames. Where are the flames coming from?"

"Flames?"

"Can't you feel them?"

"No, I can't…..I don't understand….what…..?"

The spectral highway and all its streetlights finally dissolved into vacuous black air. Slowly, another scene began to fade in. Day time. Grey skies, clouded with noxious smoke. Molten-colored lights licking the air. Rubble, dust, ash. She was standing.. no.. laying.. on a patch of concrete road, next to something tall- the black, glassy facade of a building. And for some reason, she knew she had to get the hell away from that building, lest it collapse on top of her. But it wasn't an earthquake. And suddenly, the intense heat hit her.

Yet, she couldn't remember why she was there.

Still absorbing her surroundings, she stuttered to the air; "What the.. what the hell is _that_?!"

"That's the fire!"

"What…? Where am I? What's happening?! Why is there a fire?!"

"I don't know… but-"

"Shit…"

"Talia, try to stay calm. You're the Demonhead's daughter. You're in control."

Her mother's words were like a soothing, magical balm to Talia's scorched ears. If only for her, she could believe that she was capable of anything. All she needed was that soft voice…

"OK.." she said, trembling a little, but reaching reassurance, "I'm…I'm calm."

"Right. Can you see where the fire is coming from?"

"I think…no…no…" and, just like that, she lost it again. "Holy fucking shit! The city.. Everywhere's burning up! Please.. what's going on?!"

"That's just it; I don't know. I can't see either. But you _must_ stay calm, OK?"

"I don't know if I can."

"Of course you can. Remember who you are. I shouldn't need to tell you that."

Her tone was stern yet fair, and again it helped to calm the stunned woman. She paused, taking several moments to collect herself. Still she had no idea where she was or what was going on.

"Ok…you're right," he managed, regaining her ability to stand up, "I'm calm. I'm _calm_. Yes…I'm calm. I might bein the middle of a fucking war zone, but I'm calm…"

"OK, now just walk."

"To where?"

"It doesn't matter, Just walk. You'll be OK."

"Do you know where I am? Do you recognize anything?"

"No."

"Alright… Wait a minute…where's...?" hadn't someone been with her, until recently? Up until the highway? She could vaguely recall someone...

"You killed him."

"Killed who?!"

Suddenly, she saw it. Looking down from a ledge of ancient, sandy gray stone, she saw him whisper "goodbye", before being swallowed up in the melee. But he was formidable – she knew that much. She had seen it first hand. He was stronger than them. He would be OK. At least, that's what he had told her. But she couldn't wait around to see.

He fought for her, for his own life.. but she hadn't killed him. It was his decision to help her, save her. So what was her mother talking about?

Something hit her in the left hip, and she only registered the pain upon looking down and seeing the blood flowing freely down her leg. It occurred to her then that she had fired hundreds of bullets in her short life, but had never taken one. Her assailant, however, was nowhere to be seen.

Another one in the lower left thigh.

She lurched forward, half trying to miraculously shake off the agony of the two tiny missiles, and half hoping somehow to dodge her opponent. She had no weapon, and nowhere to hide, but she couldn't let herself die like this. Not yet. There was something she had to do; and although it evaded her at that present moment, she knew she had to hang on in order to fulfill it.

A lump of rubble sprung up, grass-like, in her path, sending her sprawling face first into the road. In the process of falling, she felt a third bullet hit her in the right arm, and a fourth in her right kidney. This wasn't fair - she was losing, and being thoroughly humiliated in the process. So agonizing was the pain now that she wasn't sure if she could even breathe. No, she couldn't breathe.. because something was lodged in her lung, and she was coughing blood, choking on it, suffocating...

The last thing she saw as she grappled with the scorched concrete was her mother standing several hundred meters in the distance, and those same filthy animals, seemingly having come from nowhere, advancing on her from behind, like a monstrous tidal wave of inhumane form. Then the real blast hit in a blaze of white light, and she knew no more.

Every pensive film needed a rain scene, it seemed. And, in real life, rain often fell exactly when she herself was in a pensive mood.

She had fallen asleep in his embrace, him at her back, then woken up shortly after. The curtain was open, letting the full effect of the night's sheen stream in through the window. The droplets of water hit the window pane and became rivulets, the reflection of which, against the wall, made the plaster seem as if it was bleeding. Bleeding shadows. Or bleeding black rain. Black rain, like the ashen sort that had fallen over Hiroshima, and would again over Gotham.

Or perhaps it gave the illusion that everything was inside out; white night sky, and dense, dark rain. Had there been stars, they would have been black holes, sucking the light away into their gaping mouths.

Suddenly he stirred, sitting up and accidentally letting her fall from his grasp.

"Woah.." she exclaimed, rolling over to face him.

"Oh... sorry..." he blinked several times, apparently as startled as she.

"Bad dream?" she asked

"Weird dream," he replied, furrowing his brow.

She sat up, propping herself up on her right hand, and placing her left reassuringly against his upper arm in a wordless question as to whether or not he was OK. She was most often the one to fall asleep first, and when she wasn't, she had never known him to wake up so suddenly, and with such a confused - for want of a better word - expression.

He looked down for a moment, shaking his head quickly as if to clear dust out of his non existent hair, then looked back at her. The metal of his mask glimmered in the moonlight, cold; but his skin was warm and inviting, not gray and dead.

"You too," he said with a barely perceptible nod— an affirmation that he could read her like a book. It was impossible to hide anything from him; he may as well have been living inside her head.

She nodded back, her hand straying up his impressive bicep, to his shoulder, across his clavicle and swiftly up his neck to the grate covering his mouth. His hand rose to meet hers, his fingers sliding between hers until her hand was pressed comfortingly between metal and flesh. On one side she felt the subtle mechanical hum of his breath, and on the other, his slow and steady pulse. And his eyes were sparkling and inquisitive; alive.

Alive.


End file.
